The desire to go on this particular cruise all started when a cruise buddies (Kandy and Doreen) started a group Facebook page for it on December 10, 2013. They were nice and sent me an “invitation” to join the Facebook page. Who am I to say no??? So, I regularly checked in on the page to see what was going on with the other people on this cruise. It wasn’t long before I became obsessed with buying anything with anchors on it!!! Our group voted on a name for us and we soon became known as the Anchor Clankers. One person designed shirts and we were able to have them made by PR Specialties!!! So here we are, a group of people who love to go on cruises, we have a name for a group, and we have a shirt with our group name and design on it!!!!
But at this point, we had not booked the cruise.
Life has a way of giving us challenges. We were lucky and overcame the challenges as best as we could. And finally on July 22, 2014 we booked the cruise. We would be sailing on the Carnival Triumph on September 22nd!!! I was able to get us a balcony stateroom on the Lido deck on the starboard side. I have never had a room on this side of the ship. I have always been on the portside. But, I will take whatever I can get!!! There will be 3 of us in this room: myself, my husband Jim, and our son Dawson. This will be Dawson’s second cruise and I’m hoping this one will be the one that will show him the love of cruising.
Luckily, waiting this late to book meant I had a very short countdown and I really need to start making plans. The weekend we leave for Galveston would be a visitation weekend for Dawson, so it was very important that I had things figured out ahead of time. I really do not want to drive to Galveston on the day we board the ship!
I made reservations for our overnight stay at Quality Inn in Galveston and for parking at Galveston Park N Cruise. I started hoping and praying that we would be able to pick Dawson up from his visitation early enough so we could have dinner at The Original Mexican restaurant. But there was no guarantee that any of this will fall into place.
All that is left now is to make sure we have the clothes we need, pack, and pray that everything falls into place.
Stay tuned for installment #2
our life reality 